30 JANUARY 2. 2., I 9 .. THE ßR.ONTES AS TEACHER.S they all such "fat-headed oafs" that they failed to sense Miss Brontë's con- tempt and fury? One cannot help feel- ing that they gained less from Char- lotte's instruction than she expended up- on it by way of "suppressing my rage." But poor Charlotte was to fare worse. She presented herself in 1839 as governess to the children of a Mrs. Sidgwick, who, poor soul, did not dream she was about to harbor an eminent Victorian. Charlotte immediately trans- ferred her dislike of the job to Mrs. Sidgwick and her children, though she was not a verse to Mr. Sidgwick. Charlotte's complaints were many and bitter: Mrs. Sidgwick never left her a free moment to enjoy the spacious grounds and neighboring countryside; Mrs. Sidgwick would not allow the children-"riotous, perverse, unman- ageable cubs" -to be corrected ( a charge that Charlotte was to brIng against her next employer and Anne against hers, somewhat challenging our notions of middle-class rearing of chil- dren in the nineteenth century); Mrs. Sidgwick took Charlotte to task for sulking, whereupon Charlotte wept; Mrs. Sidgwick expected Charlotte to love the children; and, final indignity, Mrs. Sidgwick "overwhelms me with oceans of needlework, yards of cam- bric to hem, muslin nightcaps to make, and, above all things, dolls to dress." It sounds quite dras- tic. Certainly the patent tnisery of the new governess must have seemed so to Mrs. Sidg- wick, who, from other accounts, is saId to have been an amiable wom- an. No doubt she load- ed on the needlework with a view to keeping Charlotte from brood- ing, to give her some- thing to occupy her mind, for it is remark- able how often in those days melancholy was equated with vacancy of purpose and cheer- fulness with a full life. Still, we cannot blame Mrs. Sidgwick for be- ing an average medi- ocre nonentity; she never claimed to be other. If anything was to blame, it was the sys- tem that included nee- dlework among other semi-domestic tasks in the normal duties of a governess. Unless we T HE general feeling about the incursion into teaching of Char- lotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne Brontë is that it was little short of martyrdom. The letters of Charlotte and the diaries of Anne (reflected in the novels of both) abound with evi- dence that the experience of being teachers was an agony to all four. Nothing, we are given to understand, could be worse than to be a private governess, a tutor, or a schoolteacher to such pupils as came the Brontës' way, nothing worse than to be employed by such people as engaged the Brontës I am in sympathy with the view that their enforced choice of careers was a pity (except that it provided marvel- lous material for fiction), and rejoice with everyone else that at least three of them discovered their true vocation in time to write their unique, uncon- formable books. But were the Brontës mere lambs among wolves when they set forth to teach? I suggest that if anything could equal the misfortune of their lot as teachers it was the lot of the respective pupils and employers of Charlotte, Branwell, Emily. and Anne. Charlotte was the first to teach. Having practiced for a while on her sisters, she left Haworth Parsonage in 1835 to become a resident mistress at Roe Head School, where previously she had been a pupil. Her formal education had covered little more than two years' school- ing supplemented by home tuition from her maiden aunt. When, just turned nineteen, she became a mistress at Roe Head, her main quali- fication as an instructor of the young was a pro- tected upbringing; this was, after all, judged to be the highest qualifica- tion a girl could produce. The headmistress (that Miss W ooler, who re- mained a lifelong friend to Charlotte) began by treating her as a friend. Charlotte stayed with Miss W ooler for over two years, but, according to her letters and diaries, she was miserable most of the time, as she well might have been. Here is one of her diary entries: All this day I have been in a dream, half misera- ble, half ecstatic. . . . I had been toiling for nearly an hour \vith Miss Lister, Miss Marriot, and Ellen Cook, striving to teach them the distinction be- tween an article and a substantive. The parsing lesson was completed; a dead silence had succeeded it in the schoolroom, and I sat sinking from irritation and \veariness into a kind of lethargy. The thought came over me: Am I to spend all the best part of my life in this wretched bondage, forcibly suppressing my rage at the idleness, the apathy, and the hyperboli- cal and most asinine stupidity of these fat-headed oafs, and of compulsion assum- ing an air of kindness, patience and assidu- ity? Must I from day to day sit chained to this chair, prisoned \vithin these four bare walls, while these glorious summer suns are burning in heaven and the year is re- volving in its richest glow? Stung to the heart with this reflection, I started up and mechanically \valked to the window. A sweet August morning was smiling with- ou t. . . . I feI t as if I could have wri tten glo- riously. . . . If I had had time to indulge it I felt that the vague suggestion of that mo- ment would have settled down into some narrative better at least than anything I ever produced before. But just then a dolt came up \vith a lesson. Now, all this did violence to Char- lotte, who wanted to write, not teach. But what we are concerned with here is the effect of her frustration on the Misses Lister, Marriot, and Cook, not to mention the unfortunate "dolt" who interrupted Charlotte's reverie. Were they al] so unlike normal children, were ') 'e , ":"; .. . f. <t Y.." '\ , ... << . 1'/ . I · 't . . '. ) '$^ } % . l : , . ..! . p , --:.:. . t; .. --f \\ L L f ------ ,, > & " .... .. it:'.: y.^ '^"" ...... "No! Not even one penny!"